attention even in their immediate surroundings. M'e have satisfied ourselves that this list isver) complete. The methods Melton employed to track down groups appear to beadmirable. Moreover, we knew of a number of very obscure cults of the kind Melton wouldhale been most apt to miss. Each of these is in fact on his list. Obviously, there must existgroups not included in this analysis, but we suspect they are very new and that their absencedoes not distort the picture of American cults we develop here.
Location
For
each cult, we coded the state where its headquarters is located. For most cults, this isalso the state where the group originated, and in which most, if not all, of its currentmembers reside. This is because many cults consist of a single group (or congregation)while many others consist of only two or three groups. However, because of a few largecults, such as Scientology, our coding tends to minimize the picture of cult activity across thenation. For example, a state might conceivably have ten Scientology Centers, and twooutposts of the Unification Church of Rev. Sun M. Moon, but still show up in our data ashaving no cults- because none is headquartered there. Obviously, it would be preferable tohave membership figures on each cult group and to be able to estimate the relative strengthof cults on the basis of proportions of the population who adhere to cult groups. Such dataare unlikely to be available any time soon, if ever, but the data in Melton's encyclopedia are avery good substitute. Since the overwhelming majority of cults are small, a state that doesnot harbor a home-grown cult group is less fertile soil for religious novelty than are statesthat produce such groups. Indeed, it is our impression that the large cults have their majoroutposts in places where there are also many other active cult groups. An additionalproblem is that cults sometimes move. An extreme instance is Scientology, whose worldheadquarters, for a number of years, has been at sea-aboard a
320
foot ship. In examininga number of cases, we concluded that where cults move
to
is perhaps even more diagnosticof the character of environments than is where they originate. Jim Jones did not move hisPeoples Temple from Indiana to California in pursuit of milder winters. He went to gaingreater freedom to develop the cult in more radical directions. That he later fled to thejungles of Guyana shows that even California places some limits on religious deviance.Therefore, while these are not perfect data with which to explore the location of Americancults, they are the best data, indeed the first data, available. And we think our findings canbe read with considerable confidence.Table 1 shows that states differ greatly in terms of cults.' Looking at absolute numbers,California is, as has long been believed, the cult capital. One of every three American cultgroups has its headquarters in the Golden State. Next highest is New York with
12
percent,Illinois \\,ith
7,
and Florida with 4. Cults are located in 41 of the
50
states, and in the Districtof Columbia. Seven states claim only one cult headquarters, while nine states have none.Obviously, population differences play an important role in where cults flourish.Presumably, the more people in an area, the greater the number of separate groups thatcan find a founding nucleus. Indeed, that is a major proposition in Claude Fischer's theoryof subcultural diversity within cities
(1975).
Therefore, we took population differences intoaccount by dividing the number of cults located in a state by its population, and expressingthe result as the
number
of
cults
per
million
residents.
These rates are also shown in Table 1.
'It must
be
recognized that the rates for many states are based on a very small number of cases. Hadwe located one less cult for Nevada, for example, its rate would have dropped from
10.0
to
8.3.
A
loss ofa cult or two in California, on the other hand, would make no difference in the rate. For this reason, theregional rates are probably somewhat more trustworthy. Yet, it is interesting to note the high similarityof rates among states making up given regions. This suggests that the rates for individual states arerelatively accurate.
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